Our Australia [antikvár]

As 1 slt wríting these words in Fremantle. Western Australia. the office workers are leavlng the old colonlal bulldings ín Phillimore Street to head home to enjoy the last of the day's sunshine. It has been another warm, balmy day in Western Australia, with the state's top temperature of 45 degrees - around 116 degrees in the old scale - being reached in the Pilbara íron town of Goldsworthy. Along the Fremantle waterfront, the crews of the 12-metre yachts, sunburned, dishevelled and exhausted, are retumlng for another day's practice in preparation for the world fleet champlonshlps being salled In the choppy waters of the Indián Ocean. At the Lombardo's restaurant complex, squeezed among the bríghtly-palnted fishing boats at the water's edge, the early dlners are looking at menüs and choosing between local blue manna crabs or the dhufish. In the colourful gold town of Kalgoorlie, 600 kllometres from Perth, miners in shorts and heavy boots head for the Boulder BlockTavem to swill the red dust out of their throats with glasses of ice-cold Swan láger. Across the country, 4,350 kllometres away in Sydney, a noisy, excited crowd is engrossed in a game of cricket. It ls 8 pm in Sydney, and those not screaming encouragement at the Sydney Cricket Ground are moving into the city centre for the evening's entertalnment perhaps in the fascinating Rocks area, birthplace of the nation, or maybe at a smart restaurant overlooklng the harbour. What has happened in Sydney today? The evenlng paper carries a stoiy on severe summer storms which brought hall across a wlde area of the city. On the Gold Coast in the south east comer of Queensland, the pace ls quickenlng at the Conrad International Hotel and Jupiters Casino as casually-dressed gamblers chase fortunes on the blackjack tables. By now, the sun has set over Ayers Rock in the Northern Terrltoiy, the stockmen are pulllng off their boots after another arduous day, bed time stories are being read to the children of the outback, the travelling camlvals are luring remote communlties with their brlght lights, and the nighttime cover ls being pulled over this Incredlble country. Tomorrow, the great Australian adventure wlll begin all over again, but now It is time for the countiy to count its blessings. Ruggedly beautlfuL romantic and mineral-rlch. Untamed, unsullled and unllmlted In Its ability to surprlse and stimulate. The gold diggers and the grape pickers, the business tycoons and the cray flshermen, the wheat farmers and the sheep-shearers, the dockslde workers and the iron-ore miners, all are united In bellevlng that they have been given a speclal place on this earth in which to pursue their dreams. Australia is a large and complex land of 4.8 millión square kllometres, supporting a population of 16 millión, 70 per cent of whom live in the flve malnland state capitals of Sydney. Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. As a comparison, the United Klngdom has a population three and a half tlmes as large, In an area amountlng to only three per cent of Australia's land mass. Lucky is the man. if he exlsts, who can say that he has seen all of Australia Most of us merely peep behlnd the curtain here and there, and become more enchanted with each new discovery. Like the Europeans who came freely to Australia or were transported there in convict shlps somé 200 years ago, the modern-day adventurer feels a compulsion to go on In search of the myriad, sometimes mystical, experiences which this ancient continent has to offer. Australia can be the sight of Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House in early morning from the bow of the Manly ferry. It can be the awesome isolation of a 40,000 hectare Queensland cattle station, where the nearest neighbour might be 400 kllometres away. It can be an abandoned gold town in the rust-coloured outback of Western Australia, where corroding machinery and longdiscarded beer bottles evoke memories of the íeatheiy old men who tried to dig dreams out of the dirt It can be the spectacular Ayers Rock sunset listenlng to Aboriglnals' tales of their ancestors. It can be the sight of buflalo on the Marrakai Plains, Northern Terrltoiy, or crocodiles on the South Alligátor River. It can be the little alpine village of Banjo Paterson's 'Man from Snowy River' country, breathing the pure, cool alr 1,370 metres above sea level The list goes on, and for every settler, every visitor, there ls a speclal memoiy, a moment frozen ín time, a personal experience to be locked away and cherished. No-one should think they have been to Sydney or Melbourne or the Gold Coast and seen Australia Not when they haven't cruised the Murray Riverina region In New South Wales, or slept under the stars at Waterfall Creek in Kakadu National Park Amhem Land, or experienced the wilderness of the Franklin River National Park in Tasmania. Yet, as beautiful and beguiling as these places are, they are just sweeps of the brush on the extraordínary canvas that is Austndia It is a land of richness and breathtaking contrast A land of wildflowers, like the kangaroo paw, bachelor's button, mountaln eyebright and spider orehid. It is a land of blrds, like the blue-winged kookaburra Albert lyre bird, Major Mitchell cockatoo, Regent bower bird, dancing brolga and spangled drongo. It is a land of mam mais and reptiles, like the saltwater crocodlle, thorny devil, tiger snake, koala camel, wild buffalo and kangaroo. It is the land of the spectacular, like Katherine Gorge, a magnificent river canyon in inland Australia, and Ayers Rock 500-600 millión years old - a giant red gemstone rislng 348 metres above the plain from an 8 kilometre circumference. It is a land of strange-sounding platós: Humpty Doo, Coober Pedy, Smiggin Holes, Barrow Creek, the Bungle Bungles and Mudgeeraba It is a land of legendaiy people, bushrangers like Ned Kelly, Mad Dan Morgan and Captain Moonlight, whose spirit if not their lawlessness, lives on today in a population which has had to battle hard to establish its new frontiers. Two hundred years after the arrival of the first settlers, the task today for its cosmopolitan population - immlgrant Greeks, Turks, Slavs, British, Italians, Vietnamese and Dutch - is to take the baton and keep the country moving away from parochialism, and towards proud and purposeful unity. WESTERN AUSTRALIA Western Australia the biggest of all the states, occupies a third of the continent's land mass, sprawling over more than 2.5 millión square kllometres and several climate zones. If many people - and I am including Australians - flnd it hard to comprehend the vastness of the country, then they are equally staggered by the size of Western Australia You can fly for three hours in a modern jet and stlll be over Western Australian soil; you can drive for days and still be inside the state's boundaries. Superimposed on a map of Western Europe, Western Australia would stretch north to south from Oslo to Madrid and east to west from Dublin to Milán. Or, to draw another comparison, it is three and a half times bigger than Texas. This is the scale of Western Australia And yet little more